Abstract
Populations in many Midwest cities are declining. To maintain infrastructure with a shrinking
tax base, city planners have sometimes proposed to right size such cities, sometimes shutting
down or removing infrastructure. Such proposals have been met with fierce resistance among
many residents, especially in communities with a history of top-down, racialized city
planning. This raises the question: if population loss is a near certainty, is it possible to
shrink justly? Much work on environmental injustice focuses on removing bad things from an
environment, but in shrinking cities, there is a high likelihood that good things will be
removed. Is it at all possible to do this in a manner that promotes justice? In our view, the
answer is perhaps. Academics and professional city planners ought not determine the fate of
cities, but can develop detailed conceptions of a city’s future for residents to consider. To this
end, we build on a theoretical framework—the notion of a “just city”– to sketch a few ideas
about what a just shrinking city might look like, identifying both a wider array of hazards, and
possible benefits, to reducing city services than is often noticed.